Erik Swyngedouw

Modernity and Hybridity: Nature, Regeneracionismo, and the Production of the Spanish Waterscape, 1890‐1930

Spain is arguably the European country where the water crisis has become most acute in recent years. The political and ecological importance of water is not, however, only a recent development in Spain. Throughout this century, water politics, economics, culture, and engineering have infused and embodied the myriad tensions and conflicts that drove and still drive Spanish society. And although the significance of water on the Iberian peninsula has attracted considerable scholarly and other attention, the central role of water politics, water culture, and water engineering in shaping Spanish society on the one hand, and the contemporary water geography and ecology of Spain as the product of centuries of socioecological interaction on the other, have remained largely unexplored. The hybrid character of the water landscape, or “waterscape,” comes to the fore in Spain in a clear and unambiguous manner. The socionatural production of Spanish society can be illustrated by excavating the central role of water po...

Apocalypse forever?: Post-political populism and the spectre of climate change

This article interrogates the relationship between two apparently disjointed themes: the consensual presentation and mainstreaming of the global problem of climate change on the one hand and the debate in political theory/philosophy that centers around the emergence and consolidation of a post-political and post-democratic condition on the other. The argument advanced in this article attempts to tease out this apparently paradoxical condition. On the one hand, the climate is seemingly politicized as never before and has been propelled high on the policy agenda. On the other hand, a number of increasingly influential political philosophers insist on how the post-politicization (or de-politicization) of the public sphere (in parallel and intertwined with processes of neoliberalization) have been key markers of the political process over the past few decades. We proceed in four steps. First, we briefly outline the basic contours of the argument and its premises. Second, we explore the ways in which the present climate conundrum is predominantly staged through the mobilization of particular apocalyptic imaginaries. Third, we argue that this specific (re-)presentation of climate change and its associated policies is sustained by decidedly populist gestures. Finally, we discuss how this particular choreographing of climate change is one of the arenas through which a post-political frame and post-democratic political configuration have been mediated.

Neoliberal Urbanization in Europe: Large–Scale Urban Development Projects and the New Urban Policy

This paper summarizes the theoretical insights drawn from a study of thirteen large–scale urban development projects (UDPs) in twelve European Union countries. The project focused on the way in which globalization and liberalization articulate with the emergence of new forms of governance, on the formation of a new scalar gestalt of governing and on the relationship between large–scale urban development and political, social and economic power relations in the city. Among the most important conclusions, we found that: •Large–scale UDPs have increasingly been used as a vehicle to establish exceptionality measures in planning and policy procedures. This is part of a neoliberal “New Urban Policy” approach and its selective “middle — and upper–class” democracy. It is associated with new forms of “governing” urban interventions, characterized by less democratic and more elite–driven priorities. •Local democratic participation mechanisms are not respected or are applied in a very “formalist” way, resulting in a new choreography of elite power. However, grassroots movements occasionally manage to turn the course of events in favor of local participation and of modest social returns for deprived social groups. •The UDPs are poorly integrated at best into the wider urban process and planning system. As a consequence, their impact on a city as a whole and on the areas where the projects are located remains ambiguous. •Most UDPs accentuate socioeconomic polarization through the working of real–estate markets (price rises and displacement of social or low–income housing), changes in the priorities of public budgets that are increasingly redirected from social objectives to investments in the built environment and the restructuring of the labor market. •The UDPs reflect and embody a series of processes that are associated with changing spatial scales of governance; these changes, in turn, reflect a shifting geometry of power in the governing of urbanization.

Globalisation or ‘glocalisation’? Networks, territories and rescaling

This paper argues that the alleged process of globalisation should be recast as a process of ‘glocalisation’. ‘Glocalisation’ refers to the twin process whereby, firstly, institutional/regulatory arrangements shift from the national scale both upwards to supra‐national or global scales and downwards to the scale of the individual body or to local, urban or regional configurations and, secondly, economic activities and inter‐firm networks are becoming simultaneously more localised/regionalised and transnational. In particular, attention will be paid to the political and economic dynamics of this geographical rescaling and its implications. The scales of economic networks and institutional arrangements are recast in ways that alter social power geometries in important ways. This contribution, therefore, argues, first, that an important discursive shift took place over the last decade or so which is an integral part of an intensifying ideological, political, socioeconomic and cultural struggle over the organisation of society and the position of the citizen. Secondly, the pre‐eminence of the ‘global’ in much of the literature and political rhetoric obfuscates, marginalizes and silences an intense and ongoing socio‐spatial struggle in which the reconfiguration of spatial scale is a key arena. Third, both the scales of economic flows and networks and those of territorial governance are rescaled through a process of ‘glocalisation’, and, finally, the proliferation of new modes and forms of resistance to the restless process of de‐territorialisation/re‐territorialisation of capital requires greater attention to engaging a ‘politics of scale’. In the final part, attention will be paid to the potentially empowering possibilities of a politics that is sensitive to these scale issues.

Authoritarian governance, power, and the politics of rescaling

In this paper I critically assess the alleged process of globalisation of the world economy. Five interrelated themes are addressed. First, I argue that the ‘real’ myth of the globalisation discourse is part of an intensifying ideological, political, socioeconomic, and cultural struggle over the organisation of society and the position of the citizen therein. Second, the ‘mythical’ resurrection of the ‘local’ or ‘regional’ scale—both in theory and in practice—is an integral part of the ‘myth’ of globalisation. Third, the preeminence of the ‘global’ in much of the literature and political rhetoric obfuscates, marginalises, and silences an intense and ongoing sociospatial struggle in which the reconfiguration of spatial scales of governance takes a central position. Fourth, the ‘rhetoric’ of globalisation is paralleled by and facilitates the emergence of more authoritarian or at least autocratic forms of governance. Fifth, the proliferation of new modes and forms of resistance to the restless process of deterritorialisation-reterritorialisation of capital requires greater attention to ‘spatial scale’ in order to assess how the emerging new ‘gestalt of scale’ could be turned into an emancipatory and empowering process.

Towards Alternative Model(s) of Local Innovation

This paper introduces a Special Topic on social innovation in the governance of urban communities. It also seeks to widen the debate on the meaning of social innovation both in social science theory and as a tool for empirical research on socioeconomic development and governance at the local level. This debate is organised around ALMOLIN-i.e. alternative models for local innovation as utilised in the SINGOCOM (social innovation in governance in (local) communities) research. The first section explains the role of social innovation in neighbourhood development and how it is best addressed from theoretical, historical and experience-oriented viewpoints. The second section provides a survey of the definitions of social innovation in a variety of social science fields, while the third section mobilises various strands of literature that will be of use for the analytical refinement of ALMOLIN. Section four illustrates how ALMOLIN is used as an analytical tool for empirical research. The final section shows some avenues for future research on social innovation.

Impossible Sustainability and the Post-political Condition

A great variety of examples of calamities and disasters all testify to the blurring of boundaries between the human and the artificial, the technological and the natural, the non-human and the cyborg-human; they certainly also suggest that there are all manner of Natures out there. While some of the examples promise ’sustainable’ forms of development, others seem to stray further away from what might be labelled as sustainable. Sustainable processes are sought for around the world and solutions for our precarious environmental condition are feverishly developed.

DISPOSSESSING H 2 0 - The contested terrain of water privatisation

This paper considers how tactics of “accumulation by dispossession” have become pivotal strategies in contemporary global accumulation dynamics. This will be assessed in the context of the recent waves of privatization and de-collectivization of water – in particular, urban water – resources around the world. In the first part of the paper, the current wave of neoliberal privatization policies is contextualized historically and politically. In a subsequent part, the central and contradictory role of the State or state-like institutions, in their Faustian pact with hegemonic neoliberal strategies of dispossession, will be detailed. This, in turn, will lead us to a consideration of the continuing centrality of “governing” institutions in the organization and regulation of the water sector, and to a discussion of the weakened position of the citizen vis-à-vis these new modes of water governance. Finally, the contradictions of water privatization will be explored in conjunction with the mounting voices of protest and discontent that challenge the received wisdom that market forces provide the socially optimal access to – and allocation or distribution of – water. While portrayed by the pundits of neoliberalism as the panacea for all manner of social, economic, and environmental ills, we shall consider the radically contested and contestable nature of such strategies of dispossession. These sprawling forms of social resistance and the checkered success of recent privatization programs suggest that intensifying social struggle points to the possibilities of transforming the “Stalinism of the market” and may open the path for more progressive socio-environmental politics.

Power, nature, and the city. The conquest of water and the political ecology of urbanization in Guayaquil, Ecuador: 1880-1990

In this paper, I seek to explore how the circulation of water is embedded in the political ecology of power, through which the urbanization process unfolds. I attempt to reconstruct the urbanization process as simultaneously a political-economic and ecological process. This will be discussed through the exploration of the history of the urbanization of water in Guayaquil, Ecuador. As approximately 36% of its two million inhabitants has no access to piped potable water, water becomes subject to an intense social struggle for control and/or access. Mechanisms of exclusion from and access to water, particularly in cities which have a problematic water-supply condition, lay bare how both the transformation of nature and the urbanization process are organized in and through mechanisms of social power. In order to unravel the relations of power that are inscribed in the way the urbanization of nature unfolded I document and analyze the historical geography of water control in the context of the political ecology of Guayaquils urbanization. In short, Guayaquils urbanization process is written from the perspective of the drive to urbanize and domesticate natures water and the parallel necessity to push the ecological frontier outward as the city expands. I show how this political ecology of urbanization takes place through deeply exclusive and marginalizing processes that structure relations of access to and exclusion from access to natures water.

Circulations and metabolisms: (Hybrid) Natures and (Cyborg) cities

Imagine standing on Piccadilly Circus in London and considering the socio-environmental metabolic relations that come together in this global–local place. Smells, tastes, things, and bodies from all nooks and crannies of the world are floating by, consumed, displayed, narrated, visualized and transformed. The Amazon Forest Shop and Restaurant plays to the tune of eco-sensitive shopping and the multi-billion pound eco-industry while competing with McDonalds’ burgers and Dunkin’ Donuts. The sounds of world music vibrate from Virgin’s Megastore, while people, spices, clothes, foodstuffs and materials from all over the planet whirl by. The neon lights are fed by nuclear processes, coal or gas burning in far-off power plants, while passing cars consume fuels from oil-deposits and pump CO2 into the air, affecting forests, climates and people around the globe. These disparate processes trace the global geographic mappings that flow through the urban and ‘produce’ cities as palimpsests of densely layered bodily, local, national and global— but geographically depressingly uneven—socio-ecological and technonatural processes. This intermingling of things material and things symbolic produces a particular socioenvironmental milieu that welds nature, society and the city together, often through many layers of networked technostructures (like pipes, cables, relay stations, logistical apparatuses and the like), in a deeply heterogeneous, conflicting and often disturbing whole (Swyngedouw, 1996). In the summer of 1998, the Southeast Asian financial bubble imploded. Global capital moved spasmodically from place to place, leaving cities like Jakarta with a social and physical wasteland where dozens of unfinished skyscrapers are dotted over the landscape while thousands of unemployed children, women, and men roam the streets in search of survival. In the mean time, El Nino’s global dynamics were wreaking havoc in the region with its climatic disturbances. Puddles of stagnant water in the defunct skyscrapers that had once promised continuing capital accumulation for Indonesia became breeding grounds and ecological niches for mosquitoes. Malaria and Dengue fever suddenly Science as Culture Vol. 15, No. 2, 105–121, June 2006